Noah Film–Another Piece of Hollywood Trash
| Author: John Woodmorappe Subject: Noah’s Ark Date: 5/4/1999 |
The much-hyped film has little in common with the Biblical account. Now, Hollywood has always been very secular. But there was a time when films portraying Biblical characters had a semblance of fidelity to the Biblical account. I can think of childhood experiences with films such as BEN HUR and KING OF KINGS.
The present film does not even qualify as a distortion of the Biblical account. Rather, it is a smattering of Biblical truth surrounded by a sea of the filmmaker’s own imagination. Of course, since most people are Biblically illiterate, they will not know this. And NBC-TV News, appearing after the film, took the time to promote the myth of the Black-Sea flood being the Noachian Deluge.
I cannot imagine why the filmmakers chose to place the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah before the Flood, when it actually happened after the Flood. Surely a secularized Hollywood executive would at least know THAT. Or would he? And if he had wanted to include it for dramatic effects, he could have had it appear as a prophetic vision of what would happen later.
The distortions of Biblical characters demean them. Consider the fact that the Bible portrays Lot as a righteous person, and never hints at Noah’s family rising in mutiny against him. Worse yet, the film demeans God. It portrays Him as Someone who admitted making a mistake, and needed to correct Himself. It follows the liberals’ distortion of God as an “evolving” being who “progresses” from being a “vindictive” God to a “forgiving” God. Other distortions of the Divine nature are obvious to anyone remotely familiar with Biblical truth.
Finally, very little of the film deals with the actual function of the Ark. The visual effects do not change this. Had the filmmakers wanted to show adventure, they should have centered the film on the care of animals aboard the Ark, and not on made-up events (such as Lot attempting to storm the Ark). Now I understand why Halmi, the filmmaker, showed no interest in my offer of a free copy of my book. He had obviously possessed no intention of portraying the care of animals on the Ark in any kind of substantive detail.
Perhaps the viewer will be left with further questions on the Ark–such as its logistics (which, again, are virtually untouched by the film). Many of these questions can be answered in my book, NOAH’S ARK: A FEASIBILITY STUDY.
It describes how 8 people could have cared for 16,000 animals–all under rustic conditions. No Hollywood fantasies go into my book. Instead, all of its claims are based on both the Biblical account and on APPLIED animal-care methods.
John Woodmorappe